Washington is forcing on the Pakistani president an Afghan policy most of his compatriots think is disastrous, writes Graham Usher in Islamabad The fatal embrace of Islamabad, Kabul and Washington is tightening. On 26 February United States vice-president, Dick Cheney, arrived unannounced in Pakistan. Then came news that a top Taliban military commander Mullah Obaidullah Akhund had been captured by Pakistani intelligence agents in Quetta. The circle closed on 4 March when US soldiers shot dead 16 Afghan civilians at Nangarhar, a market town 50 kilometres west of the Pakistan border, after an ambush on an American convoy. All three are stratagems that portend a long hot spring not only in Afghanistan but also in Pakistan, America's frontline ally in the war on terror. It is a war few Pakistanis support and fewer believe in. This was the pliant of Cheney's "tough message" to President Pervez Musharraf. He showed the Pakistan leader satellite images of what the CIA said were Taliban and Al-Qaeda camps in Pakistan's tribal areas on the Afghanistan border. He warned that a Democrat-dominated Congress might terminate aid to Pakistan if it did not do more against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. He lectured that Musharraf's policy of striking deals with the Taliban in the tribal areas had failed and that now, before the anticipated spring offensive, Pakistan would have to aggressively go after them. "The Pakistanis either have to let us go in [to the tribal areas] or go in themselves," said US Senator Dianne Feinstein on 4 March, paraphrasing Cheney. Musharraf reportedly chafed under these lashes. But all are aware he cannot bridle too much. Since he swapped sides in the war on terror on 13 September 2001, Pakistan has received $10 billion in direct US aid and as much again in covert, much of it flowing to the military. And the US knows Musharraf is answerable to the welfare of his generals far more than he is to his people. Within hours of Cheney's departure, news flickered on the wire that Akhund had been picked up by Pakistan military intelligence in Quetta on the basis of information supplied by US military intelligence in Kandahar. Akhund was defence minister in the Taliban regime that ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. Since its ouster, he has remained one of the Taliban's supreme military commanders, directing the Afghan insurgency. He is not the first Taliban leader to be arrested by Pakistan and handed over to the Americans. He is the weightiest. This is the reason -- a week after his capture -- there has been no official Pakistan confirmation of his arrest. The army is frightened of the backlash, says one source. Cheney himself felt the sting, courtesy of a "loud boom". On 26 February, a Taliban suicide bomber killed 23 soldiers and civilians at Bagram, the US main air base in Afghanistan. The vice-president was staying there. A veritable fortress, he was never in danger. But it wasn't so much the skill of the bomber in penetrating Bagram's multiple defenses that amazed observers. It was the depth of the Taliban's intelligence. Cheney travels in the utmost secrecy. None but a handful knew he was at the camp. This is one of several reasons why the Pakistan army is hesitant to "do more" against the Taliban. Another is historical. Until 9/11 Pakistan enjoyed the kind of relations with the Taliban that Washington now wants with Pakistan: an Afghan proxy. Among certain elements in the army and intelligence agencies those relations linger. But Pakistan's ongoing Taliban dalliance is not so much because it seeks a return to the Islamic Emirate of Mullah Omar. It is an insurance against the US present policies in Afghanistan, says analyst Shafqat Mahmoud. The Taliban are seen as the only true representatives of the majority Pashtuns in Afghanistan. Pakistani analysts see the Afghan conflict in ethnic and regional terms not as a blanket war against terror. They believe that by targeting Taliban, the NATO forces by default have pitched themselves against the largest community in Afghanistan. A more nuanced approach is required and this also means talking to the Taliban. The Pashtun are not only the majority in Afghanistan. They are the majority in the tribal areas and Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP) bordering Afghanistan. People in these regions are aware that a Pakistan-aided US assault on the Taliban in Afghanistan will blow back among them, courtesy of the Taliban's links with local Islamist parties, Al-Qaeda and its freelance jihadist outfits who kill and maim for God and a price. Many can feel the chill already. Following what many believe was a US attack on an alleged Al-Qaeda-Taliban camp in the tribal areas in January, Pakistan has been hit by six suicide attacks, claiming, so far, 45 lives. Most have happened in the tribal areas and the NWFP, with the worst bombing in Peshawar. No one has taken responsibility but most leads point to Taliban. With the arrest of Akhund and his current interrogation by the CIA in Islamabad the fear is that more and worse will come. The Pakistan government has a strange policy that no one can understand, said Mullah Dadullah, a Taliban commander, on 3 March. There are many Pakistanis who agree with him. But perhaps the policy is not so difficult to fathom. Musharraf and his army are convinced there can be no military solution to the resurgence of Taliban and that, in the end, there will have to be negotiations with it and with other parts of the Afghan resistance. His problem is that his state is economically, politically and militarily dependent on a superpower that is convinced there can be a military solution in Afghanistan and that, when it comes to Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Pakistan, there can be no other.
